The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (13 page)

I was startled to find my identity so easily discovered. I greeted the professor with reserve.

The professor's pristine white shirt had been freshly soiled with dirt, his fingers were stained by chemicals, his trouser cuffs were wet. He swept his vest briskly with the backs of his hands. ‘I see you are surprised, Mr Holmes, that I recognise you. You see, I never forget a face.'

‘Neither do I,' said I. ‘And that is why I know I have never met you.'

‘Ah, pardon me!' cried Zimmerman. ‘Let me explain, sir: I recognise you from a photograph published in a magazine about twenty years ago. On that occasion you had just sent the notorious Professor Moriarty to his death at a place not far from here.'

‘At Meringen,' I said.

‘Yes, the Reichenbach falls,' he said. ‘It was thought at the time that you had died with him. I remember the pictures of you two gentlemen, side by side.'

Professor Zimmerman picked up his stick and case of tubes, and we walked together back up along the path. Several times he stopped, uncorked a tube, filled it with a sample of water from a spring, corked the tube, labelled it, and put it into the case with the other tubes. I asked him the object of his sampling, but he was reluctant to answer. He said he kept his research secret since very few of his fellow citizens would approve of him if they knew what he was up to. Half, he said, would think him mad, and the other half would think him a heretic. I did not press him. I talked casually on other subjects as we strolled, for I sensed he was anxious to reveal his secret and would tell me in good time. As we neared the village he said that he viewed me differently than he viewed most people, since I was a scientific man. He asked if I would care to see his laboratory. I said I would, and he led me to a small cottage and showed me in. One room was dedicated entirely to his researches. It was filled with distilling apparatus, chemicals in bottles and cans, Bunsen burners, and so on. In a large cage were two alpine choughs, one of whom was, according to Professor Zimmerman, a hundred and ten years old. The other, he said, was a little younger. Their age was proved, he said, by metal tags which had been clipped to their legs in 1810 by a birdcatcher named Dolman. Dolman's Choughs, he told me, had drunk the waters of Lauterbrunnen since they were chicks. This, he believed, was the secret of their great age. His researches were dedicated to finding a Spring of Youth, or, as he preferred to call it, an Eternal Elixir made from a mixture of spring waters whose beneficial minerals he was attempting, first, to isolate, and then to enhance by addition of certain other minerals and chemicals.

I was now anxious to get back to my hotel but Professor Zimmerman would not let me go easily. He enthusiastically led me to his kitchen and urged that I try a flask of his concoction. He said he had been drinking it himself. He said he was astonished at the vitality it infused into him. He said that if I drank it and liked it – that is, if I felt better and healthier – I might consider testing a month's supply for him. He showed me a flask, all carefully labelled. It looked so fresh and inviting after our brisk walk that I agreed to try it. As you know, Wilson, I have always been willing to use my own body to test my own scientific theories, so I thought nothing of drinking Zimmerman's Eternal Elixir.

If I had not drunk it I would not be here speaking to you today. I am not sure whether I owe Zimmerman my thanks or my disgust, because as yet I have not decided whether living as long as I have lived is an advantage or a mistake. But in any case he is the one responsible for sending me into the twenty-first century.

EIGHT

The Elixir of Suspended Animation

‘
C
ome now, Coombes!' I laughed – I leant back in my chair in the cheerful warmth of the Old Black Lion Inn, and I set my beer on the table. ‘You almost had me believing in your tale! But when you tell me it was thanks to having drunk Professor Zimmerman's Eternal Elixir that you are a hundred and fifty-four years old, I'm afraid you have gone beyond the bounds of my credulity.'

‘What!' said my companion, looking startled.

‘It's all good fun,' I said, ‘and I'm as good a sport as any man, but I'm feeling a bit victimized, I can tell you. Obviously you have secrets that you are keeping from me, hiding them behind a veil of fantasies. So be a good fellow, Coombes, and tell me – what is this charade all about? Oh, and a bit of advice – the art of telling a tall tale is to know when to stop. All morning you've had me almost believing you were really Sherlock Holmes himself, returned from the dead. But now, my dear Coombes, you have spoilt it.'

Coombes looked abashed, as if I'd slapped him. He tilted his head slightly, raised his napkin, daintily dabbed his lips. ‘I only meant – my dear Wilson – that Zimmerman made me deathly sick with his brew. This sickness set in motion a train of events that led to my eventual appearance here with you in the restaurant of the Old Black Lion Inn, where I am enjoying your company.'

‘Ah, well that sounds more plausible,' I said.

But I wasn't really convinced.

We paid our tab and stepped out into the bright and blowy November streets of Hay.

‘Still game for a stroll up the hill to Hay Bluff?' I asked.

‘Absolutely,' said he.

We crept through a little passageway leading off the street, walked past barking dogs, and started up the track to Hay Bluff. The path soodled across a sheep pasture and dribbled upward into woods. We crossed a stile with an acorn painted on it. Soon the town vanished behind us. Up and up we walked over green swells, up over more stiles, up and up over a grassy knoll that soared above the roof of a house mostly hidden far below in trees.

‘There it is,' he said, pointing. ‘The Old Vicarage cottage. It must be from here that Jenkins's friends saw the lights on, which prompted them to call the police the following morning, and to ask Sergeant Bundle to investigate whether Jenkins had really returned from Scotland, or whether the house had been burgled.'

‘Have you considered interviewing those two friends of Jenkins?'

‘It would be useless, Wilson. We have come to a gloomy dead-end in this case. And that, please understand, is what drove me to reach for my cocaine. I thought I had escaped from that vicious habit many years ago! But the old desire resurfaced the moment I awoke in the twenty-first century. No sooner did I find myself lying in the utter boredom of a hospital bed at St Bart's, in close proximity to medicines of all varieties, than the thought of cocaine occurred to me. Before long the undisguised desire for it assailed me. Perhaps something in the process of reviving me caused a relapse.'

‘Telling me the rest of your tale may divert your mind,' I said.

‘Yes,' he said, breathlessly.

We had just reached the high end of a steep field of sheep.

‘Let's halt for a moment,' I said.

‘Excellent idea.'

We paused by a wall. We turned, and gazed down at the huge hilly landscape falling away below.

‘So the real truth is that Professor Zimmerman's elixir proved faulty?' said I.

‘In the Pantheon of Famous Quacks,' he replied, ‘Zimmerman of Zurich is right up there with Mesmer of Paris, Jesus of Nazereth . . .'

‘Holmes!' I cried. ‘You call Jesus of Nazareth a Famous Quack! That must be the first time in history that he has been so characterized! I never imagined you to be a man who had contempt for the beliefs of others!'

‘Contempt is not the right word, Wilson. But I must confess that my dear friend and biographer, Dr Watson, always suppressed my more outré thoughts. He feared alienating large portions of the reading public. I am sure you know how he felt, Wilson, for you have been a professional writer all your life. No doubt you would suppress much of my character if you wrote about me.'

‘I don't think I would suppress anything,' I said indignantly. ‘If readers do not like my truth, let them read something else. Their tastes are their own, but my taste is for truth – or, at least, as close to truth as I can manage. But tell me, whatever can you mean by the remark that Jesus is a quack?'

‘I mean that Jesus did a lot of magical curing of madness, blindness and so on. His holy stunts were not exactly quackery, perhaps, but they gave rise to several millennia of charlatans. That is not a record that does him credit. Not to mention that by raising Lazarus from the dead he inspired a host of mad scientists to try schemes of the Victor Frankenstein variety.' Holmes laughed suddenly. ‘Come to think, the Frankenstein trick may not have been so astounding as I once imagined.'

‘You feel rested?' I asked.

‘Quite.'

‘Then let us head for
points up
, shall we?'

‘Away, Wilson!' cried he, lifting his walking stick as if it were a long sword.

And so we continued our upward journey.

‘Where did I leave off?' he asked.

‘Professor Zimmerman.'

‘Ah,' said Holmes. And then he resumed his tale.

‘Zimmerman, yes. Professor Zimmerman stood there holding out the flask with his stained fingers, smiling expectantly. It was only because he was so enthusiastic about his concoction that I humoured him and took a swig or two. He then urged me to finish the entire flask, just to be certain I would realize its full effects by the end of the day. In for a penny, in for a pound, thinks I, and I quaffed it off. I thanked him for his hospitality, then walked briskly back to my hotel. But soon I began to feel queasy, dizzy, hot, achy. My stomach would not be quiet. Gas pains. By day's end I had experienced the full effects of Zimmerman's elixir, just as he had promised – only I had not expected those effects would be vomiting, diarrhoea, sweats, chills, headache, dizziness and high temperature. I tumbled into bed and stayed for a week. I was delirious, defecating, vomiting. By the end of the second week I was dehydrated, exhausted, and I had become thinner. I remember faces leaning over me as I lay in my bed. One was the fat red face of a doctor they had brought up from Interlaken. He gave me medicines and disappeared like a dream. I remember Zimmerman's face leaning over me too. He had come to see if I had experienced an increase in animal spirits after drinking his concoction, and he was surprised to find me almost dead. His prim little moustache twitched slightly as he tried to plumb the depth of my misery. He was sympathetic, but helpless. I knew it was his flask of Eternal Elixir that had done me down, for no one else at the hotel was ill. But I did not tell Zimmerman this.

‘After two weeks the illness receded. I began to eat again. I ventured out. I rambled through the village on wobbly legs. Every day I felt stronger. I decided my pursuers must have long since given up and gone home to Germany. After three more days of rest I would pack my valise and start my journey to the German border.

‘But the following morning clouds moved in, snow began to fall, fell steadily all day. Snow continued falling the next day, too. And the next. The Bernese Oberland Railway trains were still running, so we got the newspapers from Interlaken, and we read that blizzards had blown on to the battlefields of France and that our troops were freezing to death in the trenches. One morning I awoke and looked out and saw strange tracks in new snow below my bedroom window. I hurried outside to investigate. Streaks and gouges and cock-eyed footsteps indicated that a man with a crutch had circled the hotel, had stood in one spot a long while, and then had headed back towards the village centre.

‘Perhaps the doctor who had come up from Interlaken to attend to me had also attended Ludwig's leg, and had informed him of my whereabouts. Or perhaps I was discovered because of Zimmerman, who had recognized me as Sherlock Holmes. He had told other people, with the result that soon everyone in the hotel was calling me Mr Holmes. Could it be that the rumour of a famous English detective (pardon this suggestion, Wilson!) – I say, that the rumour of a famous English detective residing in Lauterbrunnen had spread down the mountain and out into the valleys, and Ludwig had gotten wind of it?

‘The time had come for me to leave. I purchased an old pair of boots from the innkeeper. I put on a sweater and overcoat, wrapped my head in a scarf, donned my gloves, and set forth for the station, lugging my valise. I considered going down the mountain to Interlaken via the Bernese Oberland Railway, and thence on to Zurich. That would have been the most sensible thing to do. But it would also be exactly what Ludwig would expect me to do. Alternatively, I could take the Wengern Alp Railway up the mountain to Kleine Scheidegg, and from there I could switch cars and go down to Grindelwald on the far side . . . or else from Kleine Scheidegg I could do the seemingly ridiculous and take the Jungfrau Railway up to a dead-end railway station (the highest in Europe) atop the Jungfraujoch. As I walked towards the Lauterbrunnen station the snow began to fall in great blinding whirls. I nearly lost my way. When I reached the station house I peered in through the fogged window before entering. I saw Ludwig in a greatcoat hunkered by the stove. His moustache and Russian fur hat made him look like a Cossack. I remained outside in the storm. By and by the train for Kleine Scheidegg arrived, moving more slowly than usual, its light burning a hole in the whirling snow. I hurried towards the track, climbed into the first car, ducked down. A few other passengers boarded. The train started up. I thought I might have made my escape. Then I looked back and saw Ludwig sitting in the car behind, smiling at me. He pulled out a large hunting knife and ran his thumb along the blade, and smiled again. He seemed in no hurry to finish his mission. Evidently, now that he had me, he intended to enjoy the
coup-de-grace
. What worried me was not that he had a knife but that he had showed it to me. I wondered whether he was trying to lull me into thinking that the knife was his only weapon, whereas perhaps he also had a firearm.